The Moonbeam Line

The Moonbeam Line is an apt name for the for Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robinson’s pet Broadway subway project, as the subway planning has a foundation of stuff and nonsense.

This hokumAi?? that a subway would be of “national significance”, is pure hoopla, from a mayor eager to spend vast sums of other people’s money for his city to satisfy his land developer friends needs for profits; especially if those profits need to be subsidized by the regional taxpayer.

As always, transit planning in the metro Vancouver region is all about politics and rewarding political friends and the transit customer and the taxpayer be damned.

This also begs the question; “Do we really want regional mayors running the transit system?”

Alison Bailey February 28, 2014 News Radio 1130

Robertsonai??i??s subway pitch is about prestige: LRT advocate Mayor of Vancouver says Broadway corridor subway would have national impact

LOWER MAINLAND (NEWS1130) ai??i?? Itai??i??s all about political prestige; thatai??i??s what people pushing for a rail connection between Vancouver and Chilliwack say about claims from the mayor of Vancouver that a subway line along the Broadway corridor would have a ai???nationalai??? impact.

ai???The ridership on Broadway just does not need a subway,ai??? says Malcolm Johnston with Rail for the Valley. ai???Subways need large passenger flows to justify the construction costs.ai???

The group would rather see bus service improved.

Johnston says while the B-Line service along Broadway is full, the trolley bus service is not. He argues excess capacity isnai??i??t being utilized.

ai???We could modernize our trolley bus fleet, bring it up to a modern standard and have stops maybe every 400 metres apart instead of every 200 metres apart; that speeds up the service.ai???

Johnston adds light rail should go in for higher capacity.

Mayor Gregor Robertson says a subway would help make Vancouver a global research hub, linking UBC to health science facilities. Heai??i??s hoping to get $4 billion thatai??i??s earmarked for projects of ai???national significance.ai???

Comments

Well done, great post and it is fantastic to see News 1130 talk both sides on transit up Broadway for a change. Upgrading the trolleybus network and having the buses stop every 400 metres (as is already done on West 16th Avenue, bye the way) will easily do the trick to meet transit demand and end overcrowding on buses to UBC.

Really, sky train lines have nothing to do with transit and everything to do with embezzlement (taxpayer money used to make developers and SNCL rich) under the guise that the extreme housing density along the sky train line is going to solve road congestion and reduce air pollution. At the risk of sounding anti-transit, transit users on soot blowing diesel buses getting 3.5 mpg on average (diesel buses carrying fewer than 10 people per passenger kilometer in Metro Vancouver) are by far the worst polluters.

If TransLink didn’t run diesel buses much of the time on trolleybus routes and did not run diesel buses at high frequencies to accommodate sky train during “off-peak hours”, this would not be the case. Sky train is so bad for the environment, that we can reduce air pollution and carbon emissions without sky train. This is a fact which both TransLink and the City of Vancouver tacitly agree by failing to disagree when provided the evidence verified by many engineers. Moonbeam could be put on trial for his contempt of this fact if he keeps pushing sky train. Wait, he already is on trial for other shady dealings, Hootergate, and we’ll have to wait for him to finish his possible jail time, first.

Jelly Bean Development
Developers are using sky train lines to overbuild and to “go against community plans and wishes” to turn Vancouver into an over congested slum with 40 story towers along sky train lines – to increase the profit margins of foreign investors who don’t even live here. It is coined jelly bean development. If the jelly bean jar represents the condos along the sky train line, black jelly beans represent transit users, white jelly beans represent drivers and green jelly beans represent others (pedestrians and cyclists) – the only way to get large numbers of black jelly beans into the jar to take sky train and to make it appear as if the money hasn’t been embezzled for the sky train line – is to increase housing density with tall towers next to sky train stations.

Scam
When you do, you get 6 white jelly beans (drivers) on the roads, 1 black jelly bean (transit user) on sky train and 3 green jelly beans (other) on the roads and sidewalks – for every 10 jelly beans moving into the developments. It is perverse to suggest that this reduces traffic congestion – especially when sky train barely removes any diesel buses from the roads, if any, after the sky train goes into service as the diesel buses are needed to get people to the sky train line.

Personally, I can’t wait for the election and hopefully moonbeam is gone after it. The best thing for transit south of the Fraser River is for Surrey and Delta to split from TransLink to build LRT lines, in my opinion, the sooner the better. TransLink is a dirty scam by shysters.

Disclaimer:

Opinions expressed on the blog are the opinions of the writers, and are not official positions of Rail For the Valley.

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